


Your Dreams and Memories (are blurring into one)

by Alina_writes



Category: Swan Lake & Related Fandoms, Swan Lake(Nureyev)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Asperger's Siegfried, F/M, Fantasy, Meet-Cute, Parallels, Present Tense, hardened badass Odette, people are equaly awful too, swans are vicious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:20:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_writes/pseuds/Alina_writes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-the seams that hold the waking world are slowly comin' undone<br/>(You're comin' undone)</p><p>Unable to face the reality of his world, Siegfried builds a world in his head, where swans turn into women, and owls are harbringers of doom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Dreams and Memories (are blurring into one)

  _“Can’t you leave this place?_ _Run away while you are no longer swans?” He suggests_.

_She shakes her head. “It’s a part of the curse. We may not leave here, swans or not. He made it this way.”_

  _They are sitting by the Lake._ _She is piling smooth_ , _flat stones into a neat stack; he toys with his crossbow_. _Two of her maidens stop as they walk pass, curtsey at them, and go on their way._

 _“Where do the others come from, exactly?” He asks, glancing at the many figures clad in white. “They all seem quite similar to each other_.”

  _“Some of them are my ladies in waiting, and the others are the ladies in my court.” She skips a pebble across the Lake, creating a splash. A few maidens turn their heads, in a synchronized motion, to look at the source of the commotion. “They all had their own names, once, but the curse had affected their mind, stripped them of their memories. Now, all they know is chasing away any kind of threat to me_.”

 

  The first word Siegfried learned was “why”, in response to the various “no’s” he had received throughout his childhood.

  “No, you mustn’t play in the stable.” “Why?” “It would be improper for someone of your status.”

  “No, you mustn’t leave your seat during ceremonies.” “Why?” “It’s most indecorous.”

  “No, you cannot daydream while foreign guests are present.” “Why?” “It’s just not allowed.”

  “Why?” Siegfried asked. And they said, “It’s the rules. You’ll understand when you are older.”

  Siegfried waited, and waited and waited. The rules still made no sense to him.

  The ladies smiled their sweet smiles at him and never answered his questions, flitting through the corridors in their rustling gowns. The lads were a loud and rowdy bunch, and they got into Siegfried’s personal space more than it was comfortable for him. Everyone seemed to know where to be, what to do, and how to act, except for him. When they lined up in the courtyard, Siegfried couldn’t tell them apart.

  “Why is it that you all know what to do and I don’t?” He asked Benno, the son of a counselor, during one of their hunting trips.

  “Hmm?” Benno cocked his head toward him. “You’ll have to speak louder than that, my lord. It’s quite unbecoming for a prince to have such a low voice.”

  Siegfried fell silent for the rest of the trip, riding among these people, with their rules and their identical smiles.

 

_A shadow falls across the clearing, scattering the maidens. Something enormous is hovering overhead, filling the air with the deafening beating of its wings._

_He reaches for his crossbow, but she lays a hand on his to stop him._

_“It’s only a show of force,” she says. “He likes to show that he has power over us.”_

_Loosening his grip on the crossbow, he twines his fingers with hers. She makes no attempt to pull back._

_In the darkness, they wait for it to pass._

 

  When Siegfried was seven, the age of roaming around the palace and getting into places he shouldn’t, he stumbled upon a flock of swans that was resting in the garden.

  He was just trying to give them breadcrumbs. He didn’t mean to disturb them.

  The great white beasts squawked at him, struck him with their powerful wings, sending him falling to the ground. He curled into himself as white feathers clouded his vision, sobbing “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over. He was certain that he was going to die.

  “Pick on someone your own size!” Someone shouted, and Siegfried felt the swans abandoning their attacks on him. Gingerly, he sat up, one hand still holding up for fear of another airstrike. Couple of paces away, a young man was waving two large branches at the retreating swans, giving himself an appearance of a gigantic bird.

  “Be careful with those things the next time,” says the young man, putting down the branches and coming to pluck Siegfried from the ground. “They can drown you, for one thing.” He had a large, exquisite nose and very, very fair hair, and he loomed over Siegfried like the old willow in the main yard. He was not smiling.

  “Sorry,” Siegfried looked down at his shoes, which were covered in pond mud and rumpled from the incident.

  “It’s not your fault.” The young man knelt down next to him and picked him up with ease, letting Siegfried wrap his two thin arms around his neck. “You see there? On the little island, hidden in the reeds?” He pointed with a long, slender finger.

  Siegfried tilted his head. There did seem to be something…

  “A nest!” He exclaimed. The young man nodded.

  “They thought you were trying to do harm to their home, so they went berserk.” There was a hint of admiration in the young man’s tone. “The next time you see one of these creatures; remember to treat it with respect, alright?”

  “Yes,” Siegfried bowed his head, which was what the adults had told him to do when receiving advice. The young man smelled like the linen sheets fresh from the laundry room, and Siegfried felt bad for getting mud on him.

  “What’s your name?” He asked. That’s what he’s supposed to do, asking for a new acquaintance’s name, right?

  “You can call me Wolfgang. I’ll be looking after you from now on.”

  “I am Siegfried, pleased to make your acquaintance!” He announced, recalling one of the balls he had been allowed to attend.

  A smile crept across Wolfgang’s face, lighting up his blue eyes. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, too, Siegfried. Now, let’s do something about your clothes.”

 

_“He’s never hurt us. That part is true. There was once he chased away a bear that got too close,” her lips quirk into a mirthless smile. “Can you imagine that, an owl sending a bear running back to its burrow? Well, I wished it had just batted him out of the air and eaten him, right then and there.”_

_“But wouldn’t that-“he hesitates over the rest of his sentence._

_“Kill us, too? Undoubtedly, but sometimes I suppose it would be better than living like this.” She stares at him with her huge, dark eyes. “I resent this. I resent being changed against my will. I resent being confined in a single place. I resent having to bow down to my tormentor. If it ever comes to choosing between this life and death, I would gladly choose death.”_

 

  Siegfried liked Wolfgang. He liked the way Wolfgang calls him by his given name, the one name he knew to respond without stopping to think, “Wait, is that me?” He liked the way Wolfgang only smiled when he meant it. He liked the way Wolfgang was always by his side, never leaving him to navigate his way through the sea of faces.

  Above all, he liked the feeling of dancing with Wolfgang.

  Despite his rather poor performance at obeying rules and orders, Siegfried excelled at dancing. It’s the one thing that he could make sense of the rules behind it. Like pillars of a palace, the placements of hands and legs held up the entire structure of a dance, and without them, the whole thing would fall apart. It wasn’t for long that the royal court decided to let Siegfried dance at parties both as an entertainment and as a way to keep him out of trouble.

  Siegfried enjoyed dancing with the ladies, dainty, nimble creatures who were light on their feet, but they proved to be too small for his built, and more often than not he would run out of nice, witty things to say about them, and it pained him to think that he tired his partners. The lads were closer to his height, but they lacked the grace and agility that he admired in the ladies, and there weren’t many dances designed for two males. Besides, their forms were so off that Siegfried could shudder.

  Not Wolfgang, though.

  While Siegfried grew into his taut, strapping form, Wolfgang remained lanky and willowy, but somehow, they still fit together as they did when Siegfried was seven. Wolfgang’s steps were wider than those of the ladies, more precise than the lads’, and they harmonized with Siegfried’s gentle, flowing ones.

  They danced after classes, while the queen was in conference with foreign ambassadors, and when Siegfried was feeling anxious for no apparent reasons. It felt like a conversation, where Siegfried poured out his woes in leaps and spins while Wolfgang dealt with them, one by one, just like the way he caught Siegfried, time after time, with his capable arms.

  But even Wolfgang couldn’t hold up the sky.

  Siegfried could dance all he liked, hide out on balconies, sulk in hallways, but he couldn’t deny the fact that he would soon marry and become king. He began to see his mother more, who used to spend most of her time consulting the counselors, but started to drop in on him to see if he had made any progress on being a responsible monarch. The lords and ladies in the court looked at him with something in their eyes he couldn’t quite decipher, and that made him want to get away as far as he could.

  Wolfgang stayed by his side, a figure of unflappable calmness and authority amid the commotion, but even Siegfried, who weren’t the most skilled in reading people, saw that Wolfgang was coming under more and more stress. His fair hair was graying at the temples, even though he was barely into his thirties. His smiles were getting rarer and rarer, tinted with exhaustion.

  Siegfried tried his best to help with the situation. He really did. He tried to greet everyone with the correct title, to be at the right place at the right time, and not to slip back into the safety of his own mind. Despite his efforts, he still stumbled over his sentences. His attention never lasted more than five minutes.

  Siegfried wanted _out_.

 

_As if they were a single being, the maidens rise to their feet._

_"It’s time,” they say._

_“I have to go.” Her hand slips away. “Tonight, I will come for you.”_

_"And together we will break this curse,” he promises._

_She reaches up and places her hands on his cheeks. “Please remember me when I’m gone. Please?”_

_“I will,” he embraces her, feeling her trembling. “I won’t forget you. I promise.”_

_"Oh, but he will.” The voice is sharp, cruel, and all too familiar. “He always will.”_

_A painful tug ,a flash of malicious blue eye, and she is gone from his arms._

  When Siegfried woke, it was always Wolfgang’s face he saw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is inspired by Nureyev's Swan Lake, where Odette/Odile, the swan maidens, and Rothbart are all a part of Siegfried's imagination, created to cope with the constant stress he's under. The character Wolfgang, who's often ridiculed in other productions, is expanded and turned into a father-figure in Nureyev's version. For further information, you can check out this article: http://www.nureyev.org/rudolf-nureyev-choreographies/rudolf-nureyev-swan-lake It's also where I got the "Siegfried-is-Asperger's" headcanon.  
> Title comes from Sleepsong, by Bastille.
> 
> (On a side note, the Wolfgang in this fic is totally based on the dancer who portrayed him, Karl Paquette.)  
> Edit: I should mention that I was also greatly inspired by this post on tumblr http://strechanadi.tumblr.com/post/128597022887/hi-im-here-for-more-of-your-wonderful-essays  
> The blogger is both humorous and insightful, and they run a fantastic ballet blog. Go follow them. It would be a choice with no regrets.  
> (Also, I might have gotten the idea of basing my Wolfgang on Karl Paquette from them, but you'll never catch my fangirl ass alive.)


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